Ok, here it is. Finally, the long promised post naming the people who were directly responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This report is based on the science of history – the study of the written record of man. Written sources of the period of study are considered primary source evidence for the discipline. After 47 years, many confessions are extant and there is much evidence, but no source that I know of has all of them in a single place like this report does.
A complete study of the ballistic evidence proves that there were many shooters in as much as five locations, the Dal Tex Building, the Dallas Records Building, the Book Depository, and perhaps two spots on the Grassy Knoll.
[1] An overview of the hit teams is given in the biography of the infamous gangster Sam “Mooney” Giancana written by his brother Chuck and his son named Sam after Mooney. “Chuck [Giancana] would later learn through the Outfit grapevine that Mooney solicited professional killers from several quarters. Killers, who guys said, were required to be ‘top-notch marksmen’: two of [New Orleans mob boss Carlos] Marcello’s men, Charles Harrelson and Jack Lawrence, as well as two of [Florida mob boss Santos] Trafficante’s Cuban exile ‘friends.’…From Chicago, Mooney brought in Richard Cain, Chuckie Nicoletti, and Milwaukee Phil [Alderisio]…Mooney said that both Cain and Nicoletti were actual gunmen for the hit being placed at opposite ends of the Dallas Book Depository.”
[2] There was also another hit team supplied by Lyndon Johnson and headed by his long time “hatchet man,” Mac Wallace. This information comes from the work done by Glen Sample and Mark Collum in their study
The Men on the Sixth Floor.
The killing blow came from behind the picket fence on top of the grassy knoll. We know this because of the Zapruder film, which shows the right side of Kennedy’s head being blown off from front to back. The fence on the knoll was to the right front of the motorcade. Much evidence of this was totally ignored by the two governmental investigations of the Kennedy Assassination, (the Warren Commission of 1964, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations of 1978). In addition to the Zapruder film, we have the Mary Morman photo of the gunman aiming over the fence,
[3] pictures of smoke discharge from the rifle by the fence,
[4] witnesses who saw men heading toward the fence with rifles before the shooting, and that most of the people in Dealey Plaza thought some shots came from there and many rushed toward the fence, including about twenty policemen.
[5] The gunman was a mafia hit man who also worked for the CIA. He was a part of the shooting team that came from the Chicago mob. James Files aka James Sutton made a full and credible confession.
[6] He described the killing shot.
“At that point when they started proceeding down Elm Street, shots started being fired from behind…I remember the shots ringing out and even though the President was being hit with the rounds, I was considering it a miss because I knew that we were going for a head shot on the President…I heard another shot that missed…When I got to the point where I thought it would be the last field of fire, I had zeroed in to the left side of the head…because if I wait any longer then Jacqueline Kennedy would have been in the line of fire and I had been instructed for nothing to happen to her and at that moment I figured this is my last chance for a shot and he had still not been hit in the head. So as I fired that round, Mr. Nicoletti and I fired approximately at the same time as the head started forward then it went backward. I would have to say that his shell struck approximately 1000th of a second ahead of mine maybe, but that’s what started pushing the head forward which cause me to miss from the left eye and I came in on the left side of the temple. At that point, through the scope, I witnessed everything, matter and skull being blown out to the back on the limousine and …saw Jackie Kennedy crawl out there to get it.”
[7]Both the government and the mafia have attempted to suppress this testimony.
[8] The army has destroyed or withheld dental records that could prove his claim regarding a bullet shell with strange markings at the scene of the crime that was found buried in 1987 at a 1963 level near the fence where Files was standing on November 22, 1963. Without knowing about this evidence, Files confessed in 1994 to biting the bullet and placing it on the fence after he had shot Kennedy, foolishly leaving a symbol of his work. After this testimony, the bullet was examined by a forensic dentist who confirmed that the markings were teeth marks, but Files now wears dentures, thus the importance of his dental records.
[9]Files was the driver for the more notorious hit man, Charles Nicoletti. According to Files’ testimony, Nicoletti had the contract from Tony Accardo through Sam Giancana. Nicoletti was to be the primary shooter stationed in the Dal Tex Building with Files only serving as a back up on the Grassy Knoll. Accardo was the titular head of the Chicago “Outfit” at that time, but Sam “Mooney” Giancana was the real leader of the Chicago mob, in fact, the most powerful mobster in America. Files was totally aware that Mooney was working with the CIA, and he himself was working for and with the CIA through David Atlee Phillips. According to the plan, the job was not done until Kennedy had received a fatal headshot and it was to be from behind. Even though he was in front of Kennedy, Files shot because he was losing his field of fire and there had not yet been a headshot. Nicoletti fired a shot at approximately the same time and it reached Kennedy’s head just before Files’ bullet did. That is why in the Zapruder film, Kennedy’s head moves forward for a split second and then violently back.
[10]According to Files, the famous and flashy Mafioso Johnny Roselli, who did no shooting, assisted Nicoletti. Roselli was the mob liaison with the CIA. They were both let into a room in the Dal Tex Building by long time mobster Jim Braden aka Eugene Hale Brading.
[11] Braden was detained by the police after the shooting, but let go quickly. Braden confessed to visiting before the assassination with the son of Texas oilman H. L. Hunt who hated Kennedy.
[12] Bob Goodman did some investigative work that showed Hunt leased some offices in the Dal Tex building under the name of a front company called Dallas Uranium & Oil; this seems to explain how Braden was able to let Nicoletti and Roselli into a room in the Dal Tex Building.
[13] As stated before, Files and Nicoletti were paid by and working for Sam “Mooney” Giancana;
[14] Giancana had a long working relationship with the CIA.
[15]Sam “Mooney” Giancana may have been mistaken in describing the shooter opposite Nicoletti as Richard Cain rather than Files, or Cain may have been another shooter on the Grassy Knoll. We have already seen that Nicoletti and his driver James Files were shooters. Files said that he saw Richard Cain in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination, but he did not know whether or not he was another shooter.
[16] Cain had a history of working for the Chicago mob and the Chicago Sheriff’s Department at that same time.
[17]Files and Nicoletti were working independently with no knowledge of other teams, but there is much evidence of other shooters. This is standard in governmental assassination operations. Multiple teams are compiled and many of them operate on a “need to know basis” only. A second team is the one from Lyndon Johnson headed by Mac Wallace. Witnesses saw two men with guns on the 6th floor of the book depository before the shooting and many heard shots coming from the building.
[18] There is evidence that one of the men on the 6th floor was Mac Wallace. Wallace’s work truck was seen parked in Dealey Plaza before the assassination,
[19] and his fingerprints have been found on one of the boxes that made up the sniper’s nest on the 6th floor of the book depository.
[20] Further evidence comes from the confessed gunman Loy Factor, a Native-American who said that Mac Wallace recruited and paid him to be a shooter on the 6th floor of the Book Depository. Like Files, he also gave a believable testimony, but he clearly obfuscated on some points, for instance denying that he actually fired any shots, but was still paid $10,000. He also placed Lee Harvey Oswald on the 6th floor as one of the shooters.
[21] Mac Wallace was a convicted murderer who was lightly punished by the Texas criminal justice system at the behest of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
[22] After this he became Johnson’s hit man and killed U.S. Department of Agriculture investigator Henry Marshall in 1961.
[23] Marshall was killed because his findings were going to show Johnson’s corrupt financing, creating a scandal that would ruin the then powerful senator.
Since Mac Wallace was the coordinator of the team on the 6th floor, I now believe that Johnson had more than just foreknowledge of the plot, but that he was a co-conspirator. There is much corroborating evidence. Barr McClellan, an attorney that worked in the law firm that handled all of Johnson's business, has written that two top attorneys in the firm admitted that Ed Clark, the head of the firm, organized the assassination of Kennedy.
[24] I have written about the other corroborating witnesses in a previous post: Jack Ruby, E. Howard Hunt, Billy Sol Estes, Madeleine Brown, and Robert Morrow.
[25]From the Files testimony, there is no accounting for the wound in Kennedy’s neck. But because of it we know another shot hit Kennedy from the front some where on the Grassy Knoll. There were two men on the side of the road in front of the book depository, one with an umbrella that he kept moving up and down and another with a portable communication device in his pocket. At one point the umbrella was pointed at Kennedy and it could have been a hidden gun that shot Kennedy in the neck. These men have never been successfully identified even in the 1978 investigation.
[26] The third shooting team included New Orleans mobster Charles Harrelson, a convicted mob hit man who confessed to being a shooter while serving time in prison (he later denied the confession).
[27] Harrelson is pictured in the famous “tramp” photos, so we know he was in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.
[28] Harrelson was detained by the police when they found him hiding in a railroad car behind the Grassy Knoll.
[29] He could have easily moved to the railroad car after shooting Kennedy in the neck from somewhere around the Grassy Knoll. According to the Giancana biography, one of the hit teams included “two of [New Orleans mob boss Carlos] Marcello’s men, Charles Harrelson and Jack Lawrence.”
[30] I have found nothing to suggest that Jack Lawrence was there, but we have the photos of Charles Harrelson in Dealey Plaza. The FBI has reported that Carlos Marcello’s New Orleans mafia were a part of the assassination. Marcello’s own brother Joseph said to an FBI informer, “We took care of them, didn’t we?”
[31]We have more evidence of Harrelson being in Dealey Plaza, the testimony of Chauncey Holt who worked for years as a false records man for the CIA and the mafia. Men posing as Secret Service agents deflected many people who ran up the Grassy Knoll right after the shooting, including police officers.
[32] Chauncey Holt has confessed to being the man who made and delivered a variety of false identifications including some Secret Service identifications and lapel pins to Dealey Plaza, placing them in a pick-up truck parked there.
[33] Holt was one of the tramps in the famous tramp photos, often mistaken for E. Howard Hunt.
[34] The other two men in the photos were Charles Rogers and Charles Harrelson,
[35] the convicted New Orleans mob hit man. We do not know what Roger’s role was, but he had a CIA and mob background and both he and Harrelson were found hiding in the train with CIA mobster Chauncey Holt. Holt did not see them in Dealey Plaza, but met them when he went to hide in the railroad car as instructed. He did not ask them what they were there for and also did not know what they were doing because everything was on a “need-to-know basis.”
[36]Holt drove out to Dallas with: James J. Canty, a CIA and mafia pilot; Leo Moceri, another mobster; and Charles Nicoletti, the mafia hit man that was in the Dal Tex Building. They were funded by Phillip A. Twombley, who at that time owned the Bank of America and also worked for the CIA.
[37] Holt delivered false documents for Rolando Otero, Rolando Masferrer, Charles Harrelson, Richard Montoya, Carlos Morales, Aldo Vera Seraphin and Orlando Bosch. According to Holt the documents were “to be distributed by Homer Echevarria.”
[38] These men lead us to the fourth shooting team, the one containing two of [Florida mob boss Santos] Trafficante’s Cuban exile ‘friends.”
[39] These are all anti-Castro, anti-communist Cuban exiles who worked extensively with the CIA in covert operations against Cuba in the years before the assassination. According to a Secret Service investigation done right after the assassination, Echevarria had said before the hit that they were going “to take care of Kennedy.” The local Secret Service branch in Chicago opened an investigation regarding Echevarria, but the FBI ordered them to shut it down.
[40] Also, according to Robert Morrow, Rolando Masferrer coordinated the Trafficante hit team.
[41] Like James Files, Masferrer worked for both the mafia and the CIA, helping the CIA set up Oswald ahead of time.
[42]Long time Communist Cuban spy chief Fabian Escalante has divulged sources that help us to have a good idea who the shooters were. He presents evidence that Eladio del Valle Gutierrez nicknamed “Yito” and Sandalio Herminio Diaz Garcia were shooters. The deduction that Yito was a shooter is supported by the news of “his trip to Dallas in November 1963,” and “his manifest aversion to the president, whom he blamed for the very existence of the Cuban revolution; the fact that he was an expert shot; his post-crime bragging of having eliminated the obstacle to attacking Cuba; and the excessive quantity of money he handled after the assassination.”
[43] Eladio del Valle’s bragging earned him an early demise. During New Orleans Attorney General Jim Garrison’s famous 1967 investigation into the assassination of JFK he wanted to question Yito because of his relationship with David Ferrie, but before he could, del Valle was brutally murdered in Miami.
[44] More evidence we have is that del Valle told Robert Morrow ahead of time that Kennedy was going to be assassinated.
[45] One source told Cuban intelligence that Herminio Diaz “was in Dallas with Eladio del Valle, anticipating an unspecified ‘important event.”
[46] Antonio Cuesta, a Cuban exile who Cuban intelligence took prisoner, “affirmed that Herminio Diaz and Eladio del Valle were part of the Kennedy Assassination operation.”
[47] There is some evidence among Kennedy researchers that some shots came from the top of the Dallas Records Building. If these two were really a shooting team, it seems that this is the only place left for them to have been.
The Giancana biography relates the initial meetings planning for the assassination. According to Chuck Giancana after the initial meeting, “Mooney said that [Johnny] Roselli met ‘several times’ with members of the original group as well as the CIA’s Frank Fiorini [aka Frank Sturgis].
[48] We have court produced records from 1985 which show CIA contract agents Frank Sturgis, Marita Lorenz, Jerry Patrick Hemming, Pedro Diaz Lanz, and the Novo brothers, Guillermo and Ignacio, driving out from Miami with guns on November 21, 1963, one day before the assassination. There they were met at a motel and Sturgis was paid money by E. Howard Hunt for the “operation.”
[49] The same court record also disclosed that these CIA came from a “safe house” in Miami in which at one time resided CIA Alexander Rorke Jr. and infamous Cuban exile Orlando Bosch (remember Chauncey Holt made and delivered a fake ID for Bosch).
[50] Marita Lorenz left Dallas before she could be used as a decoy in the plot and she was afterwards chided by Frank Sturgis that she had missed, “The Really big one. We killed the president that day. You could have been a part of it—you know, part of history. You should have stayed. It was safe. Everything was covered in advance. No arrest, no real newspaper investigation. It was all covered, very professional.”
[51] This would seem to be the support team for the Florida mob shooting team, led by none other than long time Latin American covert operation specialist E. Howard Hunt.
E. Howard Hunt, long time CIA officer of Watergate infamy, made confessions of his part in the conspiracy in 2004 before he died (now on the internet). This was after he had denied his involvement for 44 years. He implicated Bill Harvey in the plot in the chain of command listing him above the “French gunman on the grassy knoll.” Bill Harvey was the CIA officer who oversaw ZR/RIFLE (the CIA’s program to assassinate national leaders) and he had a long history of working with mafia criminals trying to assassinate Castro. Hunt also worked with the mafia and offered Sam Giancana a contract in January of 1968 to kill Martin Luther King. Giancana turned it down.
[52] Hunt was a master propagandist for the CIA
[53] and his admitted presence in Dealey Plaza would have been to facilitate the mass deception that took place, and not as he claimed one of the three famous pictured hobos and a “bench warmer.”
[54] Hunt’s testimony was most likely what the CIA call a “limited hang-out” designed to disclose some facts of an operation with a blown cover, but mixed with lies to continue to misdirect and deceive.
Both Hunt and Robert Morrow name Michael Mertz as a French Corsican mobster who was a shooter. I now believe that this is false, part of Hunt’s disinformation picked up by Morrow when he wrote his book. Researcher Jim Marrs presents much of the information about a possible French Connection to the JFK assassination,
[55] but it does not fit with the rest of the evidence, so I am holding it in abeyance.
The shooters had help. Jack Ruby seems to have known about all the different teams because he is mentioned in the confessions of Files and Factor and was seen in Dealey Plaza by many people on the day of the assassination. He gave the false Secret Service identifications and the updated map of the motorcade route to Johnny Roselli the day before the assassination.
[56] He helped the Wallace and Factor shooting team in the days before the shooting.
[57] He was seen helping men unload guns on the street by the grassy knoll on November 22, 1963 before the assassination.
[58] Many people next to the Book Depository building right after the shooting also saw him.
[59] And of course millions of Americans saw him murder the decoy patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald, on live television before he could talk to the public or be tried. Ruby was “Mooney’s man in Dallas for years, running strip joints, gambling rackets, and narcotics for the Outfit and running guns…for the CIA.” Ruby was in charge of overseeing the Outfit’s role in the assassination, collaborating in Dallas with the government agents.” Ruby was selected because of his strong contacts with the CIA, and because “his relationships with Dallas law-enforcement officers were unusually good. Since first coming to Texas, true to his Chicago Outfit training, he’d massaged the local cops and politicians, gradually getting to know most on a first-name basis. These friendships, Mooney said, had been extremely useful in overcoming problems ‘with the local cop in the street,’” when Oswald was “unexpectedly captured alive.”
[60] Ruby killed Oswald because it was his job to get it done no matter what the consequences. The penalty for failing to get a Mafia job done that exposes the Outfit to prosecution is to be brutally tortured to death.
[61]Another who supported the operation was CIA Tosh Plumlee who has testified that he unwittingly delivered Johnny Roselli on a military airplane the day before the assassination.
[62] Robert K. Morrow has admitted to designing and building the communications equipment ahead of time, not knowing what it was going to be used for. Morrow also purchased five Italian Manlicher-Carcano rifles and gave these and the radio transceivers to David Ferrie.
[63] It was one of these rifles that was planted on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository to make it look as if Oswald did it.
I have described before how security arrangements in Dealey Plaza were completely dropped before the arrival of the president, promising to provide the names of Secret Service men in this post. Vincent Palamara’s investigation of Kennedy’s security detail included many interviews of the men. He found that Emory Roberts ordered Henry J. Rybka not to jog along side the presidential motorcade at Love Field. Additionally, riding in the follow-up car when the Secret Service men heard shots fired, Roberts ordered them to stay put and not to run to the car.
[64] Above Emory Roberts were Forest Sorrels and then Roy Kellerman, and they would have been the men responsible for reducing security in Dealey Plaza. It is almost a foregone conclusion that they were part of the plot. Fletcher Prouty was a black ops man who spent his career in working military intelligence to assist CIA covert operations. He informally investigated the security lapses that made the assassination possible. “According to the Secret Service’s own guidelines…when the motorcade must travel at lower speeds, it is essential that there be protection personnel on the ground, in buildings, and on top of buildings in order to provide needed surveillance…few of the routines were done in Dallas…It is documented that Secret Service men in Fort Worth were told they would not be needed in Dallas. The commander of an army unit, specially trained in protection and based in nearby San Antonio, Texas, had been told he and his men would not be needed in Dallas. ‘Another army unit will cover that city,’ the commander was told. I have worked with military presidential protection units. I called a member of that army unit later. I was told that the commander ‘had offered the services of his unit for protection duties for the entire trip through Texas,’ that he was ‘point-blank and categorically refused by the Secret Service,’ and that ‘there were hot words between the agencies.’”
[65]Many CIA and Cuban exiles seemed to have known about the plot and converged upon Dallas from all over the south in the time before the fateful day. In his confession Hunt also called it “the big event,” and said he “it was a very mobile experience, I was a bench warmer on it.”
[66] Indeed it was a mobile event. Jim Garrison made famous the frenzied trip by CIA agent David Ferrie from New Orleans to Houston on November 22. Apparently Ferrie, a pilot, was supposed to provide a getaway flight for two of the assassins, but never hooked up with them.
[67] We know from Morrow that at some point he was in possession of the gun used to frame Oswald and the communication equipment used by the signalmen. Ferrie was one of the pilots involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion, a virulent anti-communist who worked at times for the CIA and at times for the Mafia.
[68]On the periphery of the plotting were the host of characters from New Orleans made infamous by the Garrison trial. Garrison managed to gain testimony that Ferrie was involved in a conversation with CIA agent and businessman Clay Shaw in New Orleans in which a plan for the assassination of Kennedy using a three-way crossfire was discussed.
[69] Ferrie was a paramilitary organizer and trainer for the Cuban exiles. He may have organized some details. If Clay Shaw was involved he would have helped with funding. He ran businesses that acted as fronts for CIA money.
[70] If Ferrie did some organizing then it is likely that other New Orleans anti-communists in the intelligence community were also involved, such as Frank Bannister, Sergio Aracha Smith, and Carlos Quiroga.
[71] Garrison was going to try Ferrie for conspiracy to murder the president, but when the investigation became public in 1967, David Ferrie became frantic, and then was found dead under suspicious circumstances before he could be called before the grand jury.
Who directed the shooters? As mentioned before E. Howard Hunt named Lyndon Johnson as the man who “ordered” the assassination. Hunt sketched out a hierarchy with Johnson at the top; he said that Johnson ordered it through Cord Meyer, but there is no other evidence for this, and given Hunt’s history of equivocation, it must be heavily discounted. Below Cord Meyer, Hunt listed CIA officer David Atlee Phillips. There is overwhelming evidence that Phillips coordinated the plot. Phillips was James Files’ CIA controller. When Files arrived in Dallas he called Phillips who sent Lee Harvey Oswald to Files’ hotel room to spend a week with him assisting him in getting to know the city and calibrate some weapons.
[72] He was also the CIA controller of Rolando Masferrer.
[73]David Atlee Phillips was in charge of providing some of the details of the cover story about Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone crazed assassin. He made an amazing public mea culpa making this clear in 1977 during a public debate with Mark Lane. Operating from Mexico City, his men constructed false tape recordings and pictures to fabricate a supposed Oswald attempt to defect to Cuba in the months before the assassination. The original intent of the CIA was to blame the assassination on not Oswald the lone crazed assassin, but Oswald the communist supported by Castro so they could finally get their invasion of Cuba.
[74] The new President Johnson derailed this fast because he feared that public pressure to invade Cuba might lead to WWIII.
The Giancana biography devoted ten pages to Mooney’s confession of the details of the assassination to his brother Chuck.
[75] Being a primary source this is especially valuable because it agrees with other evidence. According to this source Mooney “held an initial meeting with Guy Bannister, Bob Maheu, and former CIA deputy director Charles Cabell, then employed in Maheu’s detective firm. There was also a man Mooney described as a “covert operation specialist” and some top brass in U.S. military intelligence from Asia in attendance.”
[76] The “covert operation specialist” was most likely Phillips because he had risen to be the CIA Chief of the Western Hemisphere. His rise was launched because he was so successful in covert operations in Latin America in the years before working on Cuba operations, masterminding the Guatemalan Coup of 1954.
The top U.S. military intelligence man was likely the one man capable of orchestrating the press, the CIA, the army and the Secret Service. Colonel Fletcher Prouty and General Ed Krulak have identified “Colonel” Ed Lansdale as being present in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. He is pictured in the tramp photos.
[77] Lansdale cut his teeth using staged events and the press to defeat insurgency and change governments in the Philippines after WWII.
[78] He ran covert operations for the CIA in Vietnam in the 1950s and wanted to continue as ambassador in 1961, but was not picked by Kennedy. After the Bay of Pigs, Lansdale headed a new covert operation against Cuba, Operation Mongoose. This is how he came to be in charge of many of the exiles and the CIA who worked with them. Lansdale also had assets in the press and this would explain how the cover story of Lee Harvey Oswald being the one lone shooter was so quickly and widely disseminated. Kennedy was going to dismantle Operation Mongoose after he promised never to invade Cuba again. This would have put Lansdale firmly in the camp of the CIA anti-communists who hated Kennedy.
[79] Morrow puts Ferrie as the mastermind of the plot,
[80] but he wasn’t even in Dallas on November 22, 1963 and was only a contract agent of the CIA. Lansdale was high up as an officer in the CIA and he was much better qualified and positioned to manage the Secret Service, the military and the press.
Guy Bannister and Bob Maheu were ex-FBI who worked with the CIA, the Cuban exiles and the mob in strident anti-communist activities. Jim Garrison uncovered evidence that Bannister was part of the plot, primarily involved with the task of “sheep dipping” Oswald: preparing him to be the set up patsy to take the fall for the murder.
[81] He must have been working under the direction of David Atlee Phillips. Maheu worked for the CIA helping connect them to the mob for assassinations.
[82] Retired General Charles Cabell was the second highest-ranking leader of the CIA fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. He was actively working to undermine President Kennedy by the end of April, 1961.
[83] He was also brother of the 1963 mayor of Dallas Earle Cabell. According to Giancana, “The nuts and bolts planning had involved some of the top people on the Dallas police force…Earle Cabell was…the man responsible for citywide security, the mayor provided the police protection of the presidential motorcade…’They made sure it was so loose down there on the day of the hit, shit, a four year-old could’ve nailed Jack Kennedy.’”
[84] This should not surprise anyone who has read about the criminally gross irregularities in the conduct of the Dallas Police investigations of the Kennedy assassination.
Also according to Chuck Giancana, “Mooney said that the entire conspiracy went ‘right up to the top of the CIA.’ He claimed that some of its former and present leaders were involved, as well as a ‘half dozen fanatical right-wing Texans, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and the Bay of Pigs Action Officer under Eisenhower, Richard Nixon.” This is more corroboration that Johnson ordered the plot. “Mooney said both ‘Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson knew about the whole damned thing,’ having met with him several times in Dallas immediately prior to the assassination.”
[85] This is reminiscent of the famous meeting at Clint Murchison’s house the night before the assassination related by Madeleine Duncan Brown. A prominent “former leader” of the CIA was Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.
Hunt said that “LBJ…designated Cord Meyer” in the CIA to launch the conspiracy, but no other assassination researcher has indicated that Lyndon Johnson ordered the plot through Cord Meyer. As I wrote earlier, Hunt is likely employing a limited hangout. It seems more likely that Johnson would have ordered the plot through Richard Helms, Deputy Director of the CIA at the time. Tracy Barnes was the CIA officer in charge of Robert Morrow and according to Morrow,
[86] he seemed to know quite a bit about the assassination after the fact and he worked directly under Helms.
According to the Giancana biography normal CIA funds were not used, but the money had come “from wealthy right-wing Texas oilmen.” Mooney was in the oil business with “Syd Richardson, H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison,”
[87] and all of these men were big financial supporters of Lyndon Johnson and they hated JFK. Hunt funded a “non-profit” that spent millions on right-wing propaganda through front companies.
[88] On the day Kennedy arrived he covertly funded a full page newspaper political attack add called “Welcome, Mr. Kennedy,” made to look like an obituary with the border in black.
[89] Hunt’s special assistant, John W. Currington, has stated publicly that he believes Hunt was behind the conspiracy.
[90] Again, Murchison hosted the party with Johnson, Nixon, Hunt and Richardson in attendance where they had a closed inner meeting the night before the assassination. Coming out of the meeting, Lyndon Johnson told his mistress, “After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again—that’s no threat—that’s a promise.”
[91] In light of Giancana’s story, it is likely that these were the men who supplied the money to pay all the mafia men involved.
I have omitted many details here in order to make this a single blog post. I encourage readers to get the sources and read the stories, especially
The Men on the Sixth Floor, and
Files on JFK. These books give lengthy transcripts of taped interviews. The 10-page section of
Double Cross referenced in this paper is also a must read.
[1] Groden, Robert J.
The Killing of a President: The Complete Photographic Record of the JFK Assassination, the Conspiracy, and the Cover-Up (New York: Viking Penguin, 1993) 18-42. This is a great summary of the different shots complete with pictures.
[2] Sam and Chuck Giancana,
Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America (New York: Warner Books, 1992), 465-466.
[3] View image at http://www.members.optushome.com.au/tnorth/badgeman2.jpg.
[4] View image at http://www.jfk-online.com/100smoke.jpg.
[5] Jim Marrs,
Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1989) 17-29.
[6] Dankbaar, Wim.
Files on JFK: Interviews with Confessed Assassin James E. Files, and more New Evidence of the Conspiracy that killed JFK (Chicago: Independent Publishers Group, 2007) 43-68, 74-79, 166-235, 502-564.
[7] Ibid, 48-49.
[8] Ibid, 80-81.
[9] Ibid, 37, 38, 49.
[10] Ibid, 47-48.
[11] Ibid, 521.
[12] Marrs, 337-339.
[13] Bob Goodman,
Triangle of Fire (San Jose, California: Laquerian Publishing Co., 1993), 215-218.
[14] Dankbaar, 55-56.
[15] Giancana, 301-304, 360-362, 406-409, 418-419, 431-441.
[16] Dankbaar, 208.
[17] Giancana, 464, 466.
[18] Marrs, 20-29.
[19] Madeleine Duncan Brown,
Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson, (Baltimore: The Conservatory Press, 1997), 84.
[20] John Kelin, “JFK Breakthrough?” Fair Play Issue 23, July-August 1998, accessed on December 12, 2009 at http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/23rd_Issue/breakthru.html.
[21] Glen Sample and Mark Collum.
The Men on the Sixth Floor, 3rd Ed. (Garden Grove, California: Sample Graphics, 2003), 29-35, 46-74.
[22] Ibid, 90-94.
[23] Ibid, 123.
[24] Barr McClellan,
Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK (New York: Hannover House, 2003) 9-11.
[25] See William J. Zeman, “Did Lyndon Johnson Order the Assassination of John Kennedy?” at http://williamjzeman.blogspot.com/2009/04/did-lyndon-johnson-order-assassination.html.
[26] Marrs, 30-33.
[27] Ibid, 333-337.
[28] See
http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/lois1.htm for a scientific analysis of the photos and an identification of who the three men were.
[29] Dankbaar, 161.
[30] Giancana, 465-466.
[31] Anthony Summers,
Conspiracy: The Definitive Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 503.
[31] Marrs, 277-278.
[32] Ibid, 319-325.
[33] Dankbaar, 156-165
[34] View image at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKharrelson.gif.
[35] Dankbaar, 31.
[36] Ibid, 160-163.
[37] Ibid, 142-155.
[38] Ibid, 156, 160.
[39] Giancana, 465-466.
[40] Marrs, 150.
[41] Robert D. Morrow,
First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy, (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992), 188-191, 204.
[42] Ibid, 242, 249-254.
[43] Fabian Escalante,
JFK: The Cuba Files, The Untold Story of the Plot to Kill Kennedy, (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2006), 164.
[44] Marrs, 503.
[45] Morrow, 232-233.
[46] Escalante, 166.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Giancana, 464.
[49] Mark Lane,
Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), 288-300.
[50] Ibid, 301.
[51] Ibid, 303.
[52] William Pepper,
Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King (New York: Carroll & Graff, 1995), 145-147.
[53] Frances Stonor Saunders.
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The New Press, 2000) 87, 246-247, 293-295.
[54] “E. Howard Hunt JFK Confession Videotape Interview,” in “
Landmark E. Howard Hunt JFK Confession Video Tape Ignored,” by Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet Friday, October 24, 2008,
http://www.prisonplanet.com/landmark-e-howard-hunt-jfk-confession-video-tape-ignored.html, accessed on 09/11/09.
[55] Marrs, 202-209.
[56] Dankbaar, 47.
[57] Sample and Collum, 21, 37-38, 55-58, 154-157.
[58] Brown, 18-19.
[59] Marrs, 324-325.
[60] Giancana, 460-461.
[61] Ibid, 460.
[62] Danbaar, 109-132.
[63] Morrow, 204-207.
[64] Vincent Palamara, “History Corrected 35 Years Later by Primary Sources,” JFK Lancer President John F. Kennedy Latest News and Research, August 21, 1998 accessed on December 13, 2009 at
http://www.jfklancer.com/LNE/limo.html; see the movie of this action at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY02Qkuc_f8.
[65] L. Fletcher Prouty,
JFK, the CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1992), 293-294.
[66] Hunt Interview by Watson.
[67] Jim Garrison,
On the Trail of Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), 6-8, 120-121.
[68] Marrs, 501.
[69] Ibid, 509.
[70] Ibid, 498-500.
[71] James DiEugenio,
Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1992), 131.
[72] Dankbaar, 46-47, 172, 191, 206-207, 211-212, 513, 517, 527-528
[73] Morrow, 242.
[74] Lane, 75-87.
[75] Giancana, 458-468.
[76] Ibid, 463.
[77] View the photos and Prouty’s writings at
http://www.prouty.org/. Prouty is a primary source for the inner operations of Army Special Operations in the 1950s and 1960s.
[78] William Blum,
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII (Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995), 41-44.
[79] See Prouty, 31-41, 54-69, 104-106, 165-167, 273-275 for a background on Lansdale.
[80] Morrow, 188-193.
[81] Garrison, 4-5, 24-27, 30-32, 34-44, 58, 62, 72, 97, 113, 134, 179-180, 186, 278.
[82] Morrow, 25, 29, 42, 146, 165-166, 169, 197-218
[83] Ibid, 75.
[84] Giancana, 465.
[85] Ibid, 464-465.
[86] Morrow, 237-239.
[87] Giancana, 462.
[88] Joachim Joesten,
Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy (New York: Marzani & Munshell Publishers, 1964), 148-150.
[89] Summers, 2; See the add at http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/mrkennedy.htm.
[90] Marrs, 277-278.
[91] See William J. Zeman, “Did Lyndon Johnson Order the Assassination of John Kennedy?” at http://williamjzeman.blogspot.com/2009/04/did-lyndon-johnson-order-assassination.html.
